Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC)

CUREC is responsible for the development of University policies and procedures to ensure that all proposed research involving human participants and personal data receives appropriate ethical review.

For all research studies that fall outside the remit of the HRA research ethics approvals system, applications for ethical review should be submitted to one of the three CUREC subcommittees.

CTRG review

CTRG will need to review your documentation prior to submission to the MS IDREC subcommittee if the study involves healthy volunteers and recruitment of NHS staff as participants, or usage of NHS facilities, premises or identifiable data.

If submitting through the MS IDREC because your project involves the above, then rather than the IRAS full dataset and site-specific information forms, CTRG will need to review the CUREC 1, CUREC 2 and/or CUREC 3 forms (as required) before submission.

Even if an CUREC approved procedure exists, CTRG requires that you write a study-specific protocol for review. This study-specific protocol must describe in detail the objectives, design, methodology, statistical considerations and organisation of the research and will act as a ‘manual’ for the research team to ensure adherence to planned methods. As the research gets underway, it can be used to monitor progress and evaluate study outcomes.

The protocol should go into as much detail about the research project as possible, to enable CTRG and all bodies to which you are submitting for approval to understand what you intend to do. The protocol is essential to enable CTRG to ascertain that appropriate insurance cover can be provided for the study.